In order to derive the fullest benefit, it is desirable to deploy a given technology to the broadest audience possible. In the emerging global marketplace, it is a prerequisite for local sales, that a technology support local languages.
IP telephony is a complex technology that requires a long development cycle and incurs high development costs. Part of the value of such a complex technology is derived from deployment maturity. A mature complex technology equates to a stable technology, with relatively lower risk and higher ease of deployment.
However, many current mature IP telephony systems were designed before the market for such technology was ripe, globally. As a result, these systems were designed without the ability to support the linguistic character sets of many prospective customers. Current systems support ASCII characters, which do not enable certain characters, which are, conversely, available in Unicode.
A legacy system is defined as a system that was developed many years ago, and is still used in business because of its value to the business and the high risk and cost to modify it or replace it with a contemporary system. An example of such a legacy system is the call control system in IP telephone switches. Call control systems are highly complex systems, typically requiring high investment costs to develop, and years to become stable/mature enough to be deployable. As a result, legacy call control systems are still used in many modern IP telephone switches.
It is highly desirable to adapt IP telephony call control systems to support additional character sets, so as to provide the same functions as the original system and perform those functions with strings of a newly introduced language.
In the past, additional character sets have been supported by modifying the code-base of the technology to incorporate additional, or alternate, characters. However, this approach has the drawback of undermining the maturity of the code. Without the history of deployment associated with the original code-base, there is a greater risk of instability. As a result, the full confidence in such a system is compromised.
What is needed is incorporation, with a legacy IP telephony call control system, of additional language character support, that further, does not compromise the maturity of the legacy system. It would be of additional benefit if such character support could be introduced in runtime.